Any time a high-profile act
of violence happens, some media pundits are quick to blame video games for
influencing the perpetrators' actions. But results of a UK study says that such
a link may not exist.

Recent research from the University of Glasgow —aiming to chart just how consumption of video games and
television changes the behaviors of young children—has found that a steady diet
of video games doesn't result in significantly altered behavior. The University
of Glasgow paper pulled data from Great Britain's massive, ten-year Millennium
Cohort Study and looked at how "conduct problems, emotional symptoms, peer
relationship problems, hyperactivity/inattention and prosocial behaviour" were
changed with regard to how much television or video games a child engaged with.

TV is generally thought of
as more harmless than video games when it comes to the emotional health of kids
but the Glasgow study found that "watching TV for 3 h or more daily at 5 years predicted
increasing conduct problems between the ages of 5 years and 7 years." No
corollary effect was found with video games, likely because parents are more
likely to monitor or regulate video game screen time than TV screen time.

As with any study, there
are caveats. This isn't a be-all, end-all set of findings. The authors themselves
say that "the study highlights the need for more detailed data to explore risks
of various forms of screen time, including exposure to screen violence." Nevertheless,
given the breadth of data drawn from 10 years and more than 10,000
participants, this could be an important cornerstone for future
research and conversations about how video games do—or do not—affect
behavior.